Shift;
Lantrin and GBU's?
Visted Norflok a while back..stayed on Ocean front ave near the Hampton roads tunnel.
Watched some Tomcats from Oceana go out on full afterburner..probably post maint check...became dots real quick.
Posted on 07/08/2004 1:01:01 PM PDT by Akira
It made sense to kill the Crusader self-propelled howitzer program, a bulky cold war left-over developing so slowly it wouldn't be available before the Starship Enterprise. We also didn't need the Comanche stealth helicopter when our problem is losing choppers to low-tech ground fire. But the stealth F/A-22 Raptor fighter, with apologies to those who consider every new military project a boondoggle, we need this jet. And far more of it than Congress plans to buy.
Even critics admit the Raptor is an incredible fighting machine. Slated to enter Air Force service next year, it blends key technologies that before only existed separately on other aircraft -- or not at all.
It has radar-avoiding stealth, of the F-117A Nighthawk, the agility of the F-16 Fighting Falcon, air-to-air combat abilities and penetrability of the F-15 Eagle, tracking abilities of the E-3 Sentry (AWACS), and, like the SR-71 Blackbird, it can fly faster than the speed of sound without using fuel-guzzling afterburners.
The F/A-22 also has better reliability and maintainability than any military fighter in history and can wipe out ground targets like radar, anti-aircraft sites, and armor formations as readily as it can sweep the skies.
IT'S NOT THAT WE'RE in danger of losing our air superiority edge -- we've already lost it. With "some foreign aircraft we've been able to test, our best pilots flying their airplanes beat our pilots flying our airplanes every time," Air Force Commander John Jumper told Congress three years ago. When U.S. planes go against the Soviet Su-27 Flanker "our guys 'die' 95 percent of the time," observes Republican Rep. Duke Cunningham of California.
Cunningham is one of only two American aces from the Vietnam War. He knows the value of even a slight edge in combat capabilities. "I'm alive today because of it," he told me.
The international arms market is now flooded with Su-27 aircraft, because the Russians will sell to anybody with a bit of loose change jingling around.
The independent American Federation of Scientists notes that the Su-27 "leveled the playing field" with the F-15, our best fighter but one that's 30 years old. Meanwhile, "The Su-37 represents a new level of capability compared with the Su-27." The Su-37, apparently close to deployment, looks frightfully effective against both air and ground targets -- meaning our soldiers.
Nor is it just Russian planes we have to worry about. Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Michael O'Hanlon, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 1999 that "Congress Should Shoot Down The F-22." O'Hanlon nevertheless admitted that even then the "Swedish Gripen, French Rafale, Eurofighter EF-2000" are "impressive weapons systems that rival the F-15 and F-16." As well they should be: One entered service in 2001, one in 2002, and one just last year. The F-15 is their grand-pappy.
No, we probably won't go to war with Sweden or France anytime soon. (Well, maybe France.) But we already face enemies with high-tech French weaponry. Rest assured in the future we will clash with them -- including the Rafale fighter. It's also rather pathetic that the Czech air force is about to take possession of 39 Gripen fighters, meaning this tiny country will be flying more advanced aircraft than the United States.
Fortunately even the Su-37 lacks one thing the F/A-22 has -- stealth capability. "Only the F/A-22 can compete with the Su-27 or Su-37," Cunningham insists, because "the stealthiness allows you to get inside his radar so you can have first [missile] launch."
Surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) also regularly improve, and potential targets like the North Korean capitol of Pyongyang bristle like porcupines with SAM sites. "If you target an area with the current SAM threat today, our planes will probably die before they ever get to the target," says Cunningham. "So the F/A-22 and B2 [stealth bomber] must soften up those radar sites." Cunningham knows a bit about SAMs, too. After his fifth "kill," he was splashed by an enemy missile that's a slingshot compared to today's technology.
ONE MAJOR CONGRESSIONAL criticism of the Raptor is the cost per plane, now over twice the original estimate. But much of that is because prime contractor Lockheed Martin added a ground attack role. Most of the rest is because those congressional critics cut back the order, knowing that with fixed development costs the smaller the order the higher the per-unit price. Sound like a sneaky game? It is.
Originally the Air Force requested 762 Raptors to support two squadrons for its ten Expeditionary Wings, and then was forced to cut that in half. But it only made its first official purchase last month of a grand total of 22 planes. That's almost enough to stock the nation's aeronautical museums. Worse, it has only authorized only enough money for 218 planes total, and may slice that further.
Mind you, these same congressmen recently passed pork-laden highway spending bills of around $300 billion, but apparently Cleveland needs that transportation museum more than our troops need protection from enemy aircraft.
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona told NBC's Meet the Press that we should consider completely canceling the F/A-22 program to free up money for more troops in Iraq. But McCain assumes defense spending is a zero-sum game. It's not.
In 1960, with no U.S. involvement in a hot war, the percentage of GDP spent on defense was 9.3. This year, with wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and anti-terrorist military activities around the world, we're spending a miserly 3.5 percent. Merely splitting the difference between 1960 and now would allow the Army to expand from 10 divisions to 12 and supply the Air Force with more F/A-22s than it would know what to do with. And yet last summer Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia offered an amendment to seize $1.1 billion from the Defense Budget and use it for AIDS/HIV spending.
Other armchair air experts say we can skip the F/A-22 (other than the 22 already procured) while awaiting the cheaper F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The F-35 is a fine plane and will be great for exporting to our allies, but it's far inferior to the F-22, especially in the stealth category. (Its advantage is a much lower price.) F-35 development is also three years behind that of the Raptor. If you needed a top-of-the-line new car immediately, would you hold off three years on buying that BMW until Honda Civics become available?
It's also true that F/A-22s were unneeded in invading Iraq -- though one of our F-117s was shot down over Serbia. The value of the F-22 in the current guerrilla war? Zero. But you know that expression about generals "planning to fight the last war"? Here it's the F/A-22 critics like O'Hanlon who remind us that during Desert Storm "The Air Force's premier fighter, the F-15C, flew 6,000 missions without a single loss." Yes, and that was 13 years ago. Any war against North Korea or China would make heavy use of the Raptor.
A WASHINGTON POST ANALYSIS piece that ripped the F/A-22 was reprinted on websites of such groups as Environmentalists Against War and Million Worker March. The Post claimed the plane's "role is now more ambiguous because no country is developing an aircraft with anything near its capabilities."
But isn't that exactly what we want: Quick and complete air domination? If price is the primary consideration, why not scrap both the F-22 and the F-35 and start rebuilding the P-51s of World War II, which cost only $54,000 in 1943 dollars? Like the F-15, they were marvelous planes in their time.
Why not? Because our potential enemies will be flying the best jets and antiaircraft missiles they can make or buy, allowing them to intimidate us in peacetime and defeat us in war. We must beat their capabilities, or we will surely die trying.
"By now I would expect our aircraft to be vtol and mach 3 at least.... WITH STEALTH"
You don't expect much, do ya? There is nothing magic, per se, about flying Mach 3......enough thrust + enough fuel to sustain the thrust and you are there. But, if you fly sustained Mach 3 you will melt those special composite wing leading edges that are key to signature reduction...but if you can do Mach 3, you aren't really in need of stealth. Even if they can see you coming, there is little they can do to touch you.
So really all you need to do is make a B-70-class aircraft take off and land vertically (lol)......it would be impressive, that's for sure. Feasible? nah. stealth.....mach 3.....vtol....these are seperate aircraft, seperate missions and it's unlikely that you'll ever see combinations of all three. 'course, that's just my opinion!
I saw little in the Little Rocket to get excited about. How long was it in the air a couple of minutes?
In part. Unless the available thrust is increased dramatically, there is no way that current weapons systems are going to make it to orbit, a~la SpaceShip One... at least not in meaningful quantity. Rutan's rocket engine design is scalable, though, so that could change - but the military is not going to invest in such a system without extensive testing. So, we're back where we began - needing a "stopgap" air-superiority fighter.
I compared Rutan's work with the X-planes, and the DynaSoar was to be an evolution of those experimetal aircraft. As a surveillance platform - or maybe a bomber skipping along the atmosphere like a flat rock across a pond (carrying one small nuclear warhead), yes, DynaSoar might've been viable. I doubt that it was ever envisioned as a platform which could take on swarms of enemy aircraft.
Shift;
Lantrin and GBU's?
Visted Norflok a while back..stayed on Ocean front ave near the Hampton roads tunnel.
Watched some Tomcats from Oceana go out on full afterburner..probably post maint check...became dots real quick.
Apparently, you haven't checked out "Iran-Iraq: War In The Air" by Tom Cooper and Farzad Bishop, nor have you checked out the website http://www.iiaf.net
The Iranians have been the only successful users of the
AIM-54 Phoenix when flying their F-14 Tomcats against Iraq from 1980 to 1988. With little or no outside help, their fleet of F-4D/E Phantoms, F-5E Tiger IIs, and F-14A Tomcats shot down no fewer than 200-250 Iraqi aircraft. The Iranians have the only Tomcat Aces, at least 3 pilots acheiving that status. In fact, here's a good link showing their air-to-air combat record during the firt ACTUAL Gulf War, before Desert Storm was later known by many by the latter title. http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_210.shtml
Iran is famous for overstating their prowess during that war. They have no jet aces in any aircraft, and could barely keep any of their aircraft mission capable, be that an F-4, F-5 or Tomcat. If I attack Southack for his famous lack of factual commentary, I have to be consistent and correct you as well.
Your first photo is an late model F-14A in the Bombcat configuration undergoing evaluation of Lantirn and systems prior to acceptance along with new engines in what would become the F-14B. In that photo, the aircraft does not yet have the new engines. The second photo is of either a B or D model Cat, I'm not sure what the Red Rippers are flying right now.
I keep asking you, where are the ICBM's to launch DynaSoars?
223 - "a platform which could take on swarms of enemy aircraft."
Southack can't seem to grasp this simple idea.
Southack, a rifle is not a good weapon when trying to counter a swarm of bees, or even one bee for that matter.
Am I too late to start a Freeper Su-27 purchase pool?
Who's running it?
"Actually, due to program acquisition processes, the cost of the program actually ROSE after it was cut a number of times."
Yep...when the program is tooled for full scale production in year 1 and you defer to year 5 that happens.
"You have to understand that even a single May-Tag washer would cost a million bucks if it was a completely new design and had to have new tooling"
No it wouldn't. Your economics for pilots text book would tell you that competition wouldn't allow that.
I WOULD agree if it were a gov't procurement program it most definitely would cost a million bucks..before overrunns.
"Change the law, don't fuss about the results of the law as the cost per-unit is a non-issue and non-starter."
No, the cost - whether on a per-unit or a programmatic basis is the ONLY issue hampering the F-22 program. As you know from your procurement for pilots textbook, the money comes from Congress, and Congress weighs many competing interests.
"This is way more complicated that most people understand."
It doesn't have to be, but obscure DOD accounting practices make it much more complex than need be. This is a political thing, more than an accounting thing.
"We disagree."
I'm interested in why you think this is so.....but lemme guess your response, from the Pukin' Dog school of ettiquette...'You are a pretender, you may or may not be in the industry....I'm so sick of people like you who don't know what you don't know that I feel like slapping you.....I don't have time to explain it to you, and right now everyone is laughing at you' (humorously formulaic!)
"Hardly. The F-22 will be operational and replace front-line aircraft"
It will replace SOME front line aircraft, sure. But you don't know how many we are going to buy (neither do I)......however, right now, with budgets being what they are, it is reasonable to assume that the production budget will suffer continuing cuts. Chapter 1 budgeting for pilots.
"Enough of this thread.
Have a nice day.
Buh-bye."
No way. You'll read this and perhaps offer some colorful insight to me on how I don't know what the heck I'm talking about...... ;-) keep it tongue-in-cheek, my man. We're all on the same side.
Have a nice weekend. I continue to enjoy the "dialogue" with the circle of military pilots on this board. I find it interesting that your opinions are so rigid on the F-22, when the financial/budgetary/political writing is plainly on the wall with regards to this program, no matter how good or great the aircraft is.
There is a reason why it very likely won't be procured in the volumes you (and the pentagon) clearly want......I'm interested in that, aren't you?
Again....have a nice weekend.
What makes you think that I've ever said otherwise?
Do you think that there is a shortage of ICBM's? Do you think that ICBM's can no longer be made (by the U.S. or our potential enemies)?
Moreover, *why* do you keep asking questions that have no bearing on anything?
Dynasoar is a dumb idea for an air superiority fighter. It takes one ICBM for one dynasoar, minimum. So, for a fleet of 500, we would need 500 ICBMs, and all their attendant launch facilities and maintenance.
It is a STOOOOOOOOOPID idea, you keep bringing up.
Since we need some more tanks, why not get some new Indy cars? They go a lot faster. And we could get some racing yachts to replace our destroyers, since they go faster.
500 ICBM's is/are no technical hurdle. The U.S. has built far more than that, as has Russia. Perhaps you are arguing that no one would bother changing the mission for such devices. You may even be right, but that sort of guess makes for poor defense planning along the lines of "terrorists would never change the mission of civilian airliners into kamikazis" sort of thinking.
And in a world where the U.S. has *already* paid an astounding $26 Billion for a mere 23 F-22's, the costs of a $2 million Titan ICBM would take quite a while to add up to what we have spent on a single atmospherically-limited fighter.
Moreover, the Titan was a way to get an orbital or sub-orbital fighter back in 1960.
As civilians have already proven, there are other, cheaper ways to reach Space today.
Perhaps you are arguing that no enemy would bother, but again, that sort of dismissal of existing, proven civilian technology seems rather unwise in the field of defense planning ("Oh those Germans...they'll never drive *around* our Maginot Line.").
236 - "the costs of a $2 million Titan ICBM would take quite a while to add up to what we have spent on a single atmospherically-limited fighter."
*** ROTFL - Boy, you really haven't got a clue, have you.
That amount of money wouldn't even by an F-4 Phantom 40 years ago (even in 1964 dollars.), let alone all the support costs.
In addition, there are all the support costs, and personnel, and equipment, and maintenance, and environmental.
Minimum costs for one flight of a DhynaSoar to orbit would be on the order of $100-200 million. And the rockets are not reusable, and take months to prepare, and are serious hazards. Launching one shuttle takes about $500 million, on average, plus the costs of the vehicles and satellites.
"As civilians have already proven, there are other, cheaper ways to reach Space today."
*** Yes, there are some cheaper ways to do some things, but they are about as practical as manpowered flight - no payload and no mission performance.
And reaching space is not the objective. Air superiority is.
236 - Just how do you think you are going to get a plane the size of f-22 into orbit?
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